Mango and Susquehanna Pawpaw--From One Green World

On Friday last week (29 April) our order from One Green World arrived. At about 2:30 pm I was at work and checked the parcel-tracking updates and saw that USPS had just recently left the boxes at the door. NJ was scheduled to get back from a five-day trip to Nashville at about 3:00, so it was the perfect storm for leaving work early.

I got home and found these two boxes at the doorstep. The shorter one contained the Mango pawpaw cultivar and the Susquehanna pawpaw cultivar. And the taller one contained the Prairie Sun and Prairie Star persimmon cultivars.

W came outside while I was taking a pic to ask why I was home and hey what's in the boxes.

The contents of the pawpaw box.

I've been thinking since February when I ordered them about where I would plant all these new trees. I had one spot scoped out for a pawpaw but I wondered what I would do for the other pawpaw. We don't have a big yard, so there's limited space. There was one option I had toyed with, but...shudder...how could I do that unspeakable act? Well, I decided to undertake the unspeakable act. 

I began digging up the non-pedigreed pawpaw. I would have liked to have kept it, because I believe in promoting the pawpaw's genetic diversity. And I would have kept it, if it had just offered a little encouragement--such as not dying half-dead every winter and then making me need to trim off the dead branches (which generally constituted half the tree), or such as putting its shoulder to the wheel and blooming on time with the other pawpaws, or such as showing promise by adorning its twigs with more than one flower bud that seemed like it would open.

I had wondered, when the moment arrived, if I would have the resolve to remove this tree. The tree had seemed meaningful to me about five years ago. Five years ago this past February, I got seriously sick, and then when I was getting better, I had hope that I would be done with the sickness, so I planted two pawpaws that reflected my anticipation of living the five or so years necessary for me to get to eat the fruit. But then the Sunflower graft on this pawpaw tree died in June that year. And then my sickness came back in July and I was confined to my bed for a month. One of the first things I did when I was well enough to was walk was go out and look at the pawpaws. I looked at the dead graft, which seemed like the entire tree, and I bent down and pulled it up from the roots. But when I pulled it up from the roots, I saw that the roots weren't dead. In fact, they were sending up new shoots. I remember feeling terrible and stuffing the roots back into the ground and then going back inside and lying down, hoping that this new life--the pawpaw's and mine--would continue to generate from the roots.

So I don't know where the resolve came from, besides from the expediency of the limited space of a small yard. And it just felt like it was time for something new, the Susquehanna, to see what that would bring.

And I dug down deep, wanting to get the roots out, which I knew were tenacious.

Once I had dug for awhile, I tried tipping the tree and pulling at it, but that just broke one of the branches.

So I got a saw and worked on it for awhile. By the way, W did me the favor of taking pictures, since NJ was late getting home from her trip, caught in traffic.

Having sawed, I pushed.

And pulled.

Clearly, I needed to saw some more. 

And W distinguished himself as a photographer as I sawed.

Just a few more tenacious roots.

And finally: it took a lot more work to pull it up in 2016 than it did when I limped out and pulled it up in 2011.

Since W had done the hard work of taking pictures, I had him hold the tree up too. And S ran over and said she wanted to pose as if she were amazed. (She's wearing a pioneer outfit because it was pioneer day at school today, as part of a lesson on Utah's history.)

And then S held the tree in triumph. 

And I worked on getting the remaining roots out.

Time to plant the Susquehanna, the smaller of the two.

As you can see, the hole didn't need to be very deep, since the roots weren't very deep. I was surprised--the pawpaw seeds I planted in cut-off waterbottles will have more room to grow than these ones from One Green World. (If the ones I planted grow at all--they should be sending up shoots sometime this month.)

Because the hole didn't need to be very deep, I refilled it with a mixture of the soil that I had dug out of the hole and some fertilized potting soil (same stuff I planted the pawpaw seeds in).

W standing next to the "tree."

A bee landed on my leg while I was planting the "tree," and although it was slothful because of the chill in the air, it flew away before W could get a picture. So he followed it with his eyes as it flew and then took a pic when it landed on a log next to the yuccas.

Then it was time to plant the Mango pawpaw. For this, I had to break new ground over near the KSU-Atwood and Shenandoah. It will be a crowded strip of land, but it's the best I can do.

I mixed the native soil with the potting soil.

The intrepid photographer.

After we planted them, W helped me out by holding a tape measure. The Susquehanna: 11 inches. (For my international readers, I apologize for giving the measurement in inches. The best I can hope is that you'll find it quaint and you'll do the conversion to centimeters either in your head or with the aid of this calculator. )

The Mango measured 23 inches, over twice as tall as the Susquehanna. W asked why the discrepancy, and I imagined that since One Green World experiences greater demand for the Susquehanna than for the Mango, they send have to send the Susquehanna trees out when they're smaller. Meanwhile, the Mangos sit in the greenhouse and have a chance to get bigger before someone orders them. Just guessin.

No pictures of the persimmons here, which I planted the next day over in the side yard. Most likely I'll post some pictures of those trees in the future, since persimmons seem naturally allied with pawpaws (not strawberries or kiwis, both of which seem like they would strike a dissonant note in relation to the pawpaw).